Lavender smiled. ‘Lady Anne tried to bribe me. She called me “a soft-hearted fool” when I refused to take a payment in exchange for my silence.’
‘You’re soft in the head, more like,’ Woods exclaimed. ‘One of these women kidnapped her grandson and gave him to a disreputable rogue. The other is a bigamist who faked her own death. They’re a right pair of jiltin’ jades! Yet you condone their crimes and don’t arrest either of them?’
Lavender picked up a flat stone and skimmed it across the surface of the canal. It bounced three times before sinking to the bottom. ‘The magistracy invited us here to catch a gang of violent criminals. Well, we’ve caught them two gangs. Our job is done and they’ve got their money’s worth. They don’t need any more arrests. Besides which, it would be hard to prove that either Lady Anne or Judith Wallace harmed anyone.’
Woods jerked the fishing rod. ‘No one got hurt? Lady Anne lied to her son and daughter-in-law, stole their nipper and pulled young Billy out of his rightful place in the world!’
‘Well, what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you.’
‘Gawd’s teeth!’
‘Do you honestly think Billy Sculthorpe would be any happier as Viscount Milton?’ Lavender asked. ‘Can you imagine him coping with the expectations of that role?’
Woods spluttered and yanked his fishing line again.
‘And Lady Anne is right,’ Lavender continued. ‘I have no proof to support my accusation and would probably make a fool of myself if I went public with my claim that Billy Sculthorpe is the rightful heir to the two earldoms. I would also ruin many lives – including Billy’s.’
‘And what about that bigamist and poisoner, Judith Wallace?’
‘There is a very good chance that the poisoning was accidental – and even if it wasn’t, it would be virtually impossible to prove in court. I’m reluctant to ruin the lives of Doctor Wallace and his children. He’s a good man and innocent of any crime. He’s in poor health and appears to be unaware of his wife’s deception. I find it hard to judge Judith Wallace too harshly.’
‘You’d have a different take on things if it were Doña Magdalena who had done that to you after you were wed!’
‘Yes, but she won’t run away and fake her own death, will she? I’m not a vicious brute. The law is woefully inadequate when it comes to protecting women from the brutality of men like Danvers. She genuinely believed he was going to kill her.’
‘Well, he would now if he ever saw her again!’
‘Exactly,’ Lavender said. ‘Which is why we must keep her secret as well. As you decided yourself with Alby Kilby, sometimes it is better to let sleeping dogs lie.’
Woods bristled with indignation. ‘Now don’t you try to palm that one off on me! It were you who decided to strike a deal with my brother and offer him immunity from arrest in exchange for information about the Panther Gang!’
‘I had no choice,’ Lavender said. ‘It was the only way I could extract you from a mire of criminal complicity.’
‘Oh! So I’m mired in sin and corruption, am I? And you’re the Angel of Grace?’
Lavender’s smile pulled taut across his face. ‘If you like.’
‘That’s impertinent comin’ from a man who tried to roast alive a boatful of suspects. That were the badness comin’ out of you, if ever I saw it.’
Lavender stifled his laugh. A swan glided past them in the water and scavenged for titbits in the reeds. ‘Judith Danvers saw a chance for happiness,’ he said quietly, ‘and she snatched at it.’
Woods gave him a sideways glance. ‘Lady Anne were right. You’re a soft-hearted fool.’
‘No, I’m just practical,’ Lavender said. ‘Northampton gaol isn’t actually big enough to hold all of the villains and lawbreakers inhabiting this small part of the county.’
Woods fell silent for a moment, then he nodded thoughtfully. ‘I have to confess I never expected to find so many folks with secrets and hidden crimes lurkin’ in such a pretty place.’
Lavender glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘Are you sure you want to return here at Whitsuntide?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Woods reeled in his fishing line as the sun finally sank below the horizon. ‘And it’ll have to be Whit – I’m busy at Easter.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes, some soft-hearted fool has asked me to stand as witness at his weddin’. He’s snatchin’ at happiness, I think, but I’ve already picked out my new coat for the occasion. I wouldn’t want to waste it.’ His fishing line swung back towards him. The hook was empty.
Lavender grinned.
Woods stood up and gathered his equipment. ‘Oh, by the way, sir, Billy Sculthorpe has drawn you and Magdalena for an early weddin’ gift.’
‘He has?’
Woods went to his inside coat pocket and pulled out some folded papers. ‘He’s done a pretty good impression of your features, if you don’t mind me sayin’, sir.’
‘Yes,’ Lavender said wryly. ‘He captured my hairy moles in exactly the right light and that’s a magnificent toad on Magdalena’s shoulder.’
‘I thought you’d appreciate them, sir.’
‘All I need are a pair of devil’s horns.’
‘I did suggest that, sir, but young Billy thought this were probably too fantastical. Mind you, he weren’t to know that a few days later you’d set fire to a boatful of men.’
Lavender grinned, folded the drawings and put them in his own coat pocket. ‘I shall treasure these always. They’ll remind me of the successful conclusion of this case.’
‘Seems to me we’ve let a lot of villains go free this time,’ Woods said, ‘but I’m glad you sorted out Billy-Boy’s future with Lady Anne.’
‘And that, Ned, is what gives me the greatest satisfaction today.’
The two men paused for a moment to savour the view of the peaceful and gently rolling valley as it sank into evening shadow below the canal embankment.
‘We’ve done well, haven’t we, sir?’ Woods said quietly.
Lavender nodded. ‘Yes, Ned. We have.’
Author’s Note
‘. . . The robbery making a great noise in the neighbourhood, an application was made to this office [Bow Street Police Office] for an active and intelligent officer to go down and investigate the business. Lavender was dispatched and in a short time saw reason to suspect five persons; with extraordinary celerity and resolution, he apprehended the whole of them . . . The county magistrates, in admiration of the zeal, intelligence and courage of Lavender, have resolved to give him a very handsome reward . . .’
The Times, 27th October, 1818
London
As you can see from the extract above, this novel is loosely based on a real event. In 1818, a gang of robbers burst into the home of an elderly man, William Sculthorpe. They robbed and viciously assaulted Sculthorpe and his son. The real Stephen Lavender was called up to Northamptonshire to investigate the attack.
I first came across my detective’s involvement in the case in David J. Cox’s excellent book: A Certain Share of Low Cunning: A History of the Bow Street Runners, 1792–1829. I was intrigued and decided to follow up Cox’s brief mention of the case by researching the news-sheet reports of the crime at the National Archives in London.
Both The Times and another London news-sheet, The Morning Chronicle, reported the vicious assault on the eighty-seven-year-old man in great detail. Unfortunately, they both tended to dwell on the horror poor William Sculthorpe experienced when the men with their ‘blackened’ faces burst into his house and the salacious and bloodthirsty details of the attack. Do you remember ‘the large quantity of clotted blood which had settled in his mouth’? I lifted this unpleasant image straight from The Times. Further research revealed that two hundred years ago, thieves generally used soot and charcoal to distort and hide their features during a robbery. The infamous balaclava, now such a popular fashion accessory amongst villains, wasn’t invented until the Crimean War in the 1850s.
But neither of the news-she
ets explained how the zealous, intelligent and brave Stephen Lavender had solved the crime. Never mind, I thought. I’ll make it up. And I did.
I took plenty of artistic licence with this novel. The first thing I did was move the crime back eight years to 1810 so it slotted into the overall time frame I have for the Detective Lavender Mystery Series. My second act was to kill off poor William Sculthorpe. In real life, the elderly man miraculously survived the vicious attack on his person during the robbery. But this wouldn’t have worked for a murder mystery novel where someone has to die.
Other significant changes I made were to the names of the characters. As I’m sure my readers already know, two-thirds of British men were called John, James, Thomas or William at the start of the nineteenth century, which can be extremely confusing. I kept the names of William and Billy Sculthorpe but nearly everyone else involved in the case has had their name changed.
Next, I turned my attention to the ‘five persons’ whom Lavender had arrested and tried to find out who they were. I discovered from the Internet that five men were hanged for burglary on Northampton Racecourse in the March following the attack on William Sculthorpe. Naturally I assumed that they were the five men apprehended by Lavender.
No, they weren’t. It transpired that these condemned men were an entirely separate gang of villains operating in the south of the county. It took a lot of help from retired Northamptonshire police officer, fellow writer and County Police Archivist, Dick Cowley, to work this out and I am very grateful to Dick for his assistance. William George, William Minards, John Taffe, Edward Porter and Benjamin Panther (whom I dubbed the ‘Panther Gang’) had committed all the crimes I described in this novel and were duly hanged for them. But they had absolutely nothing to do with the attack on William Sculthorpe in Middleton. Amused by the coincidence that there were two separate gangs, each with five members, terrorising Nottinghamshire, I decided to include the ‘Panther Gang’ in the book and use them as a red herring.
With Dick’s help, I finally tracked down the names of the villains arrested by Stephen Lavender for the attack on William Sculthorpe. They were Thomas Goode, William Walton (also known as Sawyer), father and son Thomas and William Bunning, and Isaac Goode.
Thomas Goode and William Walton were ultimately sentenced to transportation for the crime but Thomas and William Bunning were found ‘not guilty’. The fifth man, Isaac Goode, turned King’s Evidence on the others and was released without charge.
Another real-life character who eventually found her way into the pages of this novel is Lady Anne Fitzwilliam of Rockingham Castle. However, please note that the story of Billy Sculthorpe’s connection with the Fitzwilliams is entirely fictional and that the real Lady Anne died in 1769.
William Sculthorpe Senior wasn’t a discredited Catholic priest, nor a blackmailer. His son didn’t have Down’s syndrome either. These were all figments of my imagination.
I appreciate that Billy Sculthorpe’s story may have been difficult for some people to read but ever since I discovered that one of my husband’s Edwardian ancestors had kept a disabled child hidden in the house, I’ve wanted to explore this issue in fiction. Two hundred years ago, medical science made no distinction between children born with Down’s syndrome and other illnesses associated with stunted growth, such as those caused by iodine deficiency, for example. It wasn’t until 1866 that a British doctor, John Langdon Down, fully described the syndrome. Prior to that, those with the syndrome were lumped together with everyone else and labelled ‘cretins’. It’s unpleasant, I know. Unfortunately, many things in the nineteenth century make uncomfortable reading for modern readers but I’ve tried to handle the issue with sensitivity.
I now had several sub-plots running through my novel and Lavender and Woods had plenty of mysteries to solve besides tracking down Sculthorpe’s murderer. But I wasn’t finished yet. I like to have a personal sub-plot in these books, involving either Lavender or Woods. This time I decided it would be the story of Woods’ long-lost brother, Alby Kilby.
When I discovered that Middleton was only seven miles away from the Market Harborough Arm of the Grand Junction Canal, I ummed and ahhed about whether or not to include some canal scenes in the novel. Canal life is very sedentary but the burgeoning canal network was an important historical development of early-nineteenth-century Britain. I got a lot of pressure from my parents to use the canal in the book. They had owned a canal narrowboat for over thirty years and I still vividly remember my mum’s accidental attempt to give us a Viking funeral with burning barbecue coals on the back of the boat one summer. Fortunately, the ensuing fire was quickly extinguished but the experience stayed with me and prompted me to imagine the dramatic events of Chapter Thirty-One.
Mum and Dad were quite shocked when I told them that Lavender was going to burn a boat but they couldn’t have been more supportive when it came to writing the scenes. They loaned me all the canal books I’ve included in the bibliography and spent hours talking with me about the history of the British Waterways and explaining how they operated.
On 10th August, 2015, I drove down to their home in Nottinghamshire to join them for Mum’s birthday meal. That evening, very tipsy after several glasses of real ale and a bottle of wine, the three of us retired to their garden patio to plan Chapter Thirty-One. Owls hooted and bats flew over the cloud of smoke billowing from Dad’s pipe as we giggled our way through the task. I made notes on scraps of paper as moment by moment we mapped out how the scene would unfold.
‘Don’t forget to have plenty of wooden splinters flying through the air as the militia shoot at the hatch,’ Dad reminded me. Thus revealing in that one sentence the true source of my literary talent.
There can’t be many authors whose parents have played such a significant part in the writing of their novel and I feel very blessed to have shared this experience with them. I dedicated The Heiress of Linn Hagh to Mum, who fostered my adolescent love of historical fiction. Today, I happily dedicate The Sculthorpe Murder to my dad, who edited all the canal scenes for me, checked them for authenticity and virtually wrote Chapter Thirty-One.
I couldn’t have done it without you, Dad. Love you loads.
I would also like to thank my friends and fellow authors, the gals in the Hysterical Fictionaires – Jean, Kris, Babs and Claire – without whose daily help and support I would, quite simply, never be able to publish a word. Love you gals too.
Finally I would just like to say to you, the reader, that I sincerely hope you enjoyed this novel, and if you did, please leave me a review on Amazon.
Best wishes,
Karen Charlton,
Marske-by-the-Sea
North Yorkshire
7th January, 2016
Bibliography
Anthony Burton, The Great Days of the Canals (David & Charles Publishers, 1989).
David J. Cox, A Certain Share of Low Cunning: A History of the Bow Street Runners, 1792–1839 (Willan Publishing, 2010).
Charles Hadfield, The Canals of the East Midlands (David & Charles Publishers, 1970).
Stephen Hart, Cant – A Gentleman’s Guide: The Language of Rogues in Georgian London (Improbable Fictions, 2014).
Sheila Stewart, Ramlin Rose: The Boatwoman’s Story (Oxford University Press, 1993).
Michael E. Ware, Narrow Boats at Work (Moorland Publishing Company Ltd, 1980).
About the Author
Photo © 2014 Jean Gill
Karen Charlton writes historical mysteries and is also the author of a non-fiction genealogy book, Seeking Our Eagle. She has published short stories and numerous articles and reviews in newspapers and magazines. An English graduate and former teacher, Karen has led writing workshops and has spoken at a number of literary events across the north of England, where she lives. Karen now writes full-time.
A stalwart of the village pub quiz and a member of a winning team on the BBC quiz show Eggheads, Karen also enjoys the theatre and won a Yorkshire Tourist Board award for her Murder Mystery Weekends
.
Find out more about Karen’s work at www.karencharlton.com
The Sculthorpe Murder Page 28